We need to move away from the curse of whataboutery

Whataboutery is a curse. It is deployed by people who want to distract you or distract others. They make assumptions about what you mean.Clearing up in the Holylands area of south Belfast after St Patricks Day. Picture by Mal McCann

LAST Friday morning, in reply to a tweeted photograph of the Holylands the morning after St Patrick’s Day, I responded: “I lived in that area when I was a student in the mid-1970s. It was a wonderful place. That picture depresses me very much.”
And it really was a wonderful place back then. Students and residents mingled nicely together. Landlords tended to live locally and made sure that students didn’t wreck the properties, put party political posters or flags on the windows, dump garbage in the front or back gardens, or behave anti-socially.
We had parties: of [...]